Surround articulation. I. Brightness judgments

It has been hypothesized that brightness judgments require an estimate of the illuminant. Making this estimate is difficult since luminance edges can be the result of changes in either illumination or reflectance. Articulation is the addition of equally spaced incremental and decremental patches within a surround while preserving the surround's space-average luminance. It is proposed that articulation enhances the inference that the surround's luminance edge is due to a change in illumination rather than in reflectance. Articulation results in a corresponding shift in brightness judgments for test-patch increments but not for decrements. This finding concurs with Arend and Goldstein's [J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 4, 2281 (1987)] reported shifts in brightness as simple center-surround stimuli are transformed into more complex ecologically valid Mondrians.     

Effects of surround articulation on lightness depend on the spatial arrangement of the articulated region

We investigated the effect of surround articulation on the perceived lightness of a target disk. Surround articulation was manipulated by varying either the number of wedges in a surround consisting of wedges of alternating luminance or the number of checks in a surround consisting of a radial checkerboard pattern. In most conditions, increased articulation caused incremental targets to appear lighter and decremental targets to appear darker. But increasing the surround articulation in a way that did not increase the number of target-coaligned edges in the display did not affect the target lightness. We propose that the effects of surround articulation depend on the relationship between the orientations and contrast polarities of the target edges and those of edges present within the surround.     

Contrast polarity and edge integration in achromatic color perception

Previous work has shown that the achromatic color of a target patch embedded in simple two-dimensional display depends not only on the luminance contrast between the target and its immediate surround but also on the contrasts of other nearby edges. Quantitative models have been proposed in which the target color is modeled as a spatially weighted sum of edge contrasts in which the target edge receives the largest weight. Rudd and Arrington [Vision Res.41, 3649 (2001)] elaborated on this idea to include an additional mechanism whereby effects of individual color-inducing edges are "partially blocked" by edges lying along the path between the inducing edge and the target. We tested the blockage model in appearance matching experiments performed with disk-and-single-ring stimuli having all four possible combinations of inner and outer ring edge contrast polarities. Evidence was obtained for both "blockage" (attenuation) and "antiblockage" (amplification) of achromatic color induction signals, depending on the contrast polarities of the inner and outer ring edges. A neural model is proposed to account for our data on the basis of the contrast gain control occurring between cortical edge detector neurons.     

Surround articulation. II. Lightness judgments

It has been hypothesized that to achieve color constancy, lightness judgments require an estimate of the illuminant. A companion paper [J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 16, 793 (1999)] suggests that surround articulation enhances the likelihood that a global luminance edge will be interpreted as being due to changes in illumination rather than in reflectance. Articulation is the process of adding equally spaced incremental and decremental patches within a surround while preserving the surround's space-average luminance. Such a process results in lightness judgments that correlate perfectly with equal local ratio matches. For decrements, lightness constancy does not require articulation. These findings help explain why Arend and Goldstein [J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 4, 2281 (1987)] obtained color constancy with complex Mondrian surrounds but not with simple center surrounds.     

Masking effect produced by Mach bands on the detection of narrow bars of random polarity

Difficulties arise in measuring masking by Mach bands because very-low-contrast signals distort the bands. [J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 17, 1147 (2000).] Adding narrow luminance increments (bright bars) in the dark Mach band widens the dark band; adding decrements (dark bars) narrows the dark band, and conversely in the bright bands. Randomizing signal polarity prevents observers from using the distortion of the Mach bands as a cue to the presence of the signal. We measured (two-alternative-forced-choice) Mach bands' masking of randomly selected bright (incremental) or dark (decremental) bars. Detection was worse in both dark and bright Mach bands than on the neighboring plateaus. Separate analysis of trials containing only one polarity signal revealed 9-cycle/deg oscillations in performance as a function of location. Oscillations in the two polarities were approximately 180 degrees out of phase.     

Is the Kanizsa illusion triggered by the simultaneous contrast mechanism?

Current illusory contour models do not predict the disappearance of the Kanizsa illusion due to specific spatial luminance distributions within the inducers. We suggest that these stimulus conditions are characterized by an insufficient amount of induced brightness. Our model's core assumption is that contour edge detection of the Kanizsa illusion and the simultaneous contrast (brightness induction) effect are triggered by the same mechanism. The simultaneous contrast can immunize the occlusion detection mechanism against spatial and temporal noise. Our model contains physiologically inspired building blocks that detect the oriented contour edges, complete the illusory contours, and enhance them. The model succeeds in predicting the appearance and the disappearance of many different Kanizsa illusion variants.     

Upper-limit luminance for the surface-color mode appearance

A series of experiments were carried out to reveal determinants for the mode of color appearance by measuring the upper-limit luminance of a color chip for the surface-color mode. We used a CRT color monitor to present test and surround stimuli in the surface-color mode. The stimuli were composed of a three-by-three array of color chips on a gray background with a white frame. The observer increased the luminance of a center test color until it just ceased to appear in the surface-color mode. Our results show that this upper-limit luminance was different among test colors, but their brightnesses, calculated from the luminance and brightness/ luminance values, were almost the same and were slightly below the brightness of the white frame. The existence of the surrounding color chips affected the results, but their sizes and spatial arrangements did not. When all of the luminances of the surrounds changed equally, the upper-limit luminances of the test colors for the surface-color mode appearance changed by the same ratio. This result indicates that the brightness of a target was a determinant for selecting the mode of color appearance and that the brightest surround stimulus acted as a cue for determining the judgment.     

A continuous threshold model for the visco-elasto-plastic behavior of PET based multi-layer polymeric films

The envelopes of the super-pressure balloons fabricated by the French space agency (CNES) are made of a multi-layer polymeric film that shows substantial viscoelastic and viscoplastic behavior, both depending nonlinearly on stress. A model is presented that takes into account stress depending viscoelastic and viscoplastic strain response functions observed in uniaxial creep experiments. For easy numerical implementation, the strain response functions are represented by a Prony series, whose coefficients form a continuous spectrum on the logarithmic retardation time scale. The observed response functions are generated by an exponential power law distribution of the Prony coefficients with exponent 3. The distribution is fully characterized by three stress dependent parameters: its center, width, and an intensity factor, corresponding to the maximum coefficient. Creep and recovery experiments show that both viscoelastic and viscoplastic strain are highly stress dependent over a limited stress range and are approximately linear at low stresses and around the maximum stress reached during flight. A continuous threshold function is proposed that approximates well the observed stress dependence of the intensities. It is assumed that the other viscoelastic (viscoplastic) parameters change around the same threshold as the viscoelastic (viscoplastic) intensity and are approximately constant elsewhere. The model reproduces very well the strain response observed in creep and recovery experiments with different creep stresses.     

Time course of brightness under transient glare condition

It was shown that a peripheral glare source reduces the brightness of a foveal stimulus. We hypothesized that this brightness reduction is governed by an inhibitory effect of the glare source on the test. We reported the results of an investigation of the dynamic of brightness reduction of an incremental stimulus immediately after the onset of a glare source in the field of view. A magnitude comparison paradigm using constant stimuli was adopted to determine the luminance that appeared equal in brightness to the standard patch. The luminance of the standard stimulus was in the mesopic range (0.5 cd/m2), and the levels of glare were 15 and 60 lx. Results showed that the time course of brightness reduction followed the typical shape attributed to the Broca-Sulzer effect. Data were fitted with a model that first considers the response of a peripheral ganglion cell to glare and then its inhibitory effect on the test signals. We discussed the plausibility of a postretinal stage of processing.     

Filter model for lightness and brightness on different backgrounds.

A filter model is proposed to account for the effects of background luminance on perceived brightness or lightness of a target area. Special attention is focused on a crispening effect describable as a local increase of the rate of change of brightness with target luminance, as target luminance passes through the level of background luminance. The model is based on the assumption of competition, in the form of mutual-shunting-feedback inhibition, between target and surround.     

Finite displacement plate flexure by the use of matrix incremental approach

A finite element incremental stiffness formulation for determining finite displacement flexure behaviour of thin elastic plates is presented. The solution of the finite displacement problems is based on a piecewise linear incremental approach. The procedural aspects of the incremental approach, the control of incremental sizes and the accuracy of the incremental approximation are investigated. The details concerning how to obtain in-plane stresses and how to treat edge conditions are discussed. Results include rectangular plates under lateral pressure with various edge conditions and aspect ratios. The laterally loaded plate with edges movable in the plane of the plate is also treated.     

Luminace, not brightness, determines temporal brightness enhancement with chromatic stimuli.

Brightness-duration relations for chromatic stimuli were studied using three pulse-to-background luminace relations: chromatic equal-luminance pulses (3.2 cd/m2) were presented as increments of 0.3 or 1.0 log units above a lower luminance achromatic background, or were presented in hue substitution, equated in luminance to the achromatic background, so that no spatio-temporal luminance transients occurred during stimulus presentation. Incremental pulses produced temporal brightness enhancement (the Broca-Sulzer phenomenon), but hue substitution pulses did not. Temporal brightness enhancement thus depends upon the occurrence of luminance transients and cannot be produced by pulsed-to-background brightness differences associated solely with chromaticity differences.     

Visual adjustments to temporal blur

After observers have adapted to an edge that is spatially blurred or sharpened, a focused edge appears too sharp or blurred, respectively. These adjustments to blur may play an important role in calibrating spatial sensitivity. We examined whether similar adjustments influence the perception of temporal edges, by measuring the appearance of a step change in the luminance of a uniform field after adapting to blurred or sharpened transitions. Stimuli were square-wave alternations (at 1 to 8 Hz) filtered by changing the slope of the amplitude spectrum. A two-alternative-forced-choice task was used to adjust the slope until it appeared as a step change, or until it matched the perceived transitions in a reference stimulus. Observers could accurately set the waveform to a square wave, but only at the slower alternation rates. However, these settings were strongly biased by prior adaptation to filtered stimuli, or when the stimuli were viewed within temporally filtered surrounds. Control experiments suggest that the latter induction effects result directly from the temporal blur and are not simply a consequence of brightness induction in the fields. These results suggest that adaptation and induction adjust visual coding so that images are focused not only in space but also in time.     

一种自适应的图像双边滤波方法

提出一种利用双边滤波的图像平滑滤波方法,即在滤除图像中高频噪声的同时,按照图像亮度变化保持图像中处于高频部分的边缘信息的自适应滤波过程。该滤波方法将传统的Gauss滤波器的权系数优化成Gauss函数和图像的亮度信息乘积的形式,优化后的权系数再与图像作卷积运算。这样,滤波时就可以考虑到图像的亮度信息,在滤除图像噪声的同时尽量保持了图像的边缘。由于双边滤波的方法可以使滤波器的权系数随着图像的亮度变化而改变,所以在滤波过程中能达到自适应滤波的目的。     

基于拉普拉斯金字塔分解的多尺度边缘检测

边缘表现为图像中具有奇异性点的集合,利用改进的拉普拉斯金字塔分解捕获这些奇异性点,得到各尺度下的带通图像,通过分析,得出分解后的带通图像在边缘处产生零交叉点,构造统计量帮助提取零交叉点,再通过多尺度边缘融合实现多尺度边缘提取.与LOG和Canny边缘检测的对比实验表明,所建立的算法能够可靠、有效、精确的获得图像的边缘.     

Flicker sensitivity measured with intermittent stimuli: II. Comparison between temporal gradient detection and the "De Lange" curves.

The threshold gradient for perception of a linear change in luminance with time has been measured as a function of the stimulus duration. These data are compared with the "De Lange" curves representing the flicker sensitivity measured with intermittent presentation of the stimulus as a function of the stimulus duration. For this purpose it is necessary to take into account the fact that a linear luminance gradient, being a relatively low-frequency signal, is affected less by the low-pass filter supposedly situated in the visual system than by a sinusoidal signal (flicker) of the same duration.     

Electronic structure and stability of semiconducting graphene nanoribbons

We present a systematic density functional theory study of the electronic properties, optical spectra, and relative thermodynamic stability of semiconducting graphene nanoribbons. We consider ribbons with different edge nature including bare and hydrogen-terminated ribbons, several crystallographic orientations, and widths up to 3 nm. Our results can be extrapolated to wider ribbons providing a qualitative way of determining the electronic properties of ribbons with widths of practical significance. We predict that in order to produce materials with band gaps similar to Ge or InN, the width of the ribbons must be between 2 and 3 nm. If larger bang gap ribbons are needed (like Si, InP, or GaAs), their width must be reduced to 1-2 nm. According to the extrapolated inverse power law obtained in this work, armchair carbon nanoribbons of widths larger than 8 nm will present a maximum band gap of 0.3 eV, while for ribbons with a width of 80 nm the maximum possible band gap is 0.05 eV. For chiral nanoribbons the band gap oscillations rapidly vanish as a function of the chiral angle indicating that a careful design of their crystallographic nature is an essential ingredient for controlling their electronic properties. Optical excitations show important differences between ribbons with and without hydrogen termination and are found to be sensitive to the carbon nanoribbon width. This should provide a practical way of revealing information on their size and the nature of their edges.     

Three-dimensional spatial grouping affects estimates of the illuminant

The brightnesses (i.e., perceived luminance) of surfaces within a three-dimensional scene are contingent on both the luminances and the spatial arrangement of the surfaces. Observers viewed a CRT through a haploscope that presented simulated achromatic surfaces in three dimensions. They set a test patch to be approximately 33% more intense than a comparison patch to match the comparison patch in brightness, which is consistent with viewing a real scene with a simple lightning interpretation from which to estimate a different level of illumination in each depth plane. Randomly positioning each surface in either depth plane minimized any simple lighting interpretation, concomitantly reducing brightness differences to approximately 8.5%, although the immediate surrounds of the test and comparison patches continued to differ by a 5:1 luminance ratio.     

Color‐edge detection based on discrimination of noticeable color contrasts

Color‐edge detection is an important research task in the field of image processing. Efficient and accurate edge detection will lead to higher performance of subsequent image processing techniques, including image segmentation, object‐based image coding, and image retrieval. To improve the performance of color‐edge detection while considering that human eyes are ultimate receiver of color images, the perceptually insignificant edges should avoid being over‐detected. In this article, a color‐edge detection scheme based on the perceptual color contrast is proposed. The perceptual color contrast is defined as the visible color difference across an edge in the CIE‐Lab color space. A perceptual metric for measuring the visible color difference of a target color pixel is defined by utilizing the associated perceptually indistinguishable region. The perceptually indistinguishable region for each color pixel in the CIE‐Lab color space is estimated by the design of an experiment that considers the local property due to local changes in luminance. Simulation results show that the perceptual color contrast is effectively defined and the color edges in color images are detected while most of the perceptually insignificant edges are successfully suppressed through the proposed color‐edge detection scheme. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 19, 332–339, 2009     

First-principles study on electronic properties of SiC nanoribbon

Under the generalized gradient approximation (GGA), the electronic properties are studied for SiC nanoribbon with zigzag edge (ZSiCNR) and armchair edge (ASiCNR) by using the first-principles projector-augmented wave (PAW) potential within the density function theory (DFT) framework. Distinct variation behaviors in band gap are exhibited with increasing ribbon width. The ZSiCNR is metallic except for the thinner ribbons (N _z = 2–4) with small direct band gaps, while the direct band gaps of ASiCNR exhibit sawtooth-like periodic oscillation features and quench to a constant value of 2.359 eV as width N _a increases. The PDOS onto individual atom shows that a sharp peak appeared at the Fermi level for broader ZSiCNR comes from the edge C and Si atoms with H terminations. The charge density contours analysis shows the valence charges are strongly accumulated around C atom, reflecting a significant electron transfer from Si atom to C atom and thus an ionic binding feature. In addition, the Si–H bond is also ionic bond while the C–H bond is covalent bond. The dangling bonds give rise to one (two) flat extra band at the Fermi level for ZSiCNR with either bare C or bare Si edge (for ZSiCNR with bare C and Si edges as well as for ASiCNR with either bare C edge or bare Si edge), except for ASiCNR with bare C and Si edges in which two nearly flat extra bands appear up and below the Fermi level.